FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRM MONDAY, JUNE 3, 1996 (202) 514-2007 TDD (202) 514-1888 FORMER MEMBER OF NAZI-SPONSORED LITHUANIAN MOBILE KILLING UNIT IS DENATURALIZED Washington, D.C. -- The Department of Justice announced today that a Gulfport, Florida man who admitted serving in an infamous Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian battalion that perpetrated numerous mass killings of Jews and others during World War II, has been denaturalized after agreeing to relinquish his United States citizenship and leaving the country. On May 28, United States District Judge Steven D. Merryday of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, entered a Consent Judgment and Order stripping Juozas (a/k/a Joseph) Budreika, 79, of his naturalized United States citizenship. The decision was received by the Department today. Budreika admitted in an agreement settling a denaturalization action brought against him in September 1994 by the Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) that he illegally procured his United States citizenship and that he was not a person of good moral character because of his service in the 2nd/12th Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft (Protective Detachment) Battalion, and because he willfully misrepresented and concealed this service in applying for United States citizenship. The 2nd/12th Battalion was armed, sponsored and controlled by Nazi Germany. During 1941 and 1942, the 2nd/12th Battalion murdered thousands of unarmed Jews and other civilians in Lithuania and Byelorussia (now Belarus) because of their race, religion, political beliefs, or national origin. In Byelorussia, the Battalion functioned largely as a mobile killing unit, waging a town-by-town hunt for Jews and suspected communists. Under the terms of the agreement, Budreika, a retired cook, agreed to depart the United States permanently and assented to the entry of an order revoking his United States citizenship. Budreika left the United States for Lithuania by commercial airliner on May 14. OSI Director Eli M. Rosenbaum said Budreika's denaturalization and permanent departure from the United States are the latest results of OSI's ongoing efforts to identify and take legal action against former participants in Nazi persecution residing in this country. "The cancellation of Juozas Budreika's ill-gotten U.S. citizenship is another important law enforcement victory on behalf of the victims of wartime Nazi oppression," Rosenbaum said. Fifty-six Nazi persecutors have now been stripped of U.S. citizenship -- three of them within the past two weeks alone -- and 47 have now been removed from the United States since OSI began operations in 1979. There are more than 300 persons currently under investigation by OSI, according to Rosenbaum. ### 96-251